Tether
by Sarah Rose Serena
Summary: Klaus has been betrayed, bedridden in agony, a mystic blade cut through his chest, burning with fever and delirium. Katherine has Elena's body and Elena is lost in the dark wood, ejected from herself, set adrift. But a spirit behind the scenes leads her to New Orleans. To the Original hybrid. It's like some sick twisted joke, her mortal enemy, the only one who could save her soul.


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**TETHER**

[a story of _The Originals_ by _Sarah Rose Serena_]

(AN:_ I know, I know. Going against the ships again. There are so, so many of them too, passing in the night. And yet I always seem to be stuck on my own, out here on a bobbing buoy. I can't help it. What can I say? I'm rebel. Coda for 1x14 "Long Way Back From Hell" and TVD 5x14 "No Exit" with the caveat that no one discovers the truth about Katherine._) (Post Note: _For all of you irate about MSK over in the "Reign" section, not to worry. I have that on its way next. I've just got some original work deadlines I have to meet first. But soon._)

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_They. Will. Pay. For this._

The hoarse painstaking whisper still echoes in the silence of the room long after Elijah has pulled away from his poisoned brother. Pulled away and left the room, its door to the outside world left ajar just enough to taunt his eyes as they fixate, unable to turn his head, unable to move an inch, imprisoned within the burning searing agony of his own body by a hexed dagger that crawled inside him, plunged in by his own brother to save their sister from his wounded wrath. _So, what a tangled web we weave_. But he doesn't care about that. All he cares about is getting this dagger out. Getting the pain to stop. The burning agony. It is excruciating. And he is helpless. As hard as he fights, as much as he strains against it, he can't even lift a finger, can't even scream the torment loose. And with the helplessness, his anger only grows, feeding the flame of his betrayed rage. When he gets himself free of this torture, he will burn the fucking world down around them for doing this to him. His _family_. His beloveds. They will pay. They will all pay.

But then the slender slip of a girl slips silently inside through that open door, her hair long and dark, glinting golden hues of mahogany in the sun that streams from a window past sheer white drapes, her eyes a familiar glow of warm amber, but her hair is tangled and her eyes are panicked, and a shock runs through him, his very first distraction strong enough to detract from the pain, from the seething rage. Just plain shock. Nothing more. She is the very last thing he ever expected to see.

"Klaus," she murmurs, her rasping voice breathless and hushed as she shuts the door, careful to not make a sound as it clicks closed and she switches the lock. "I can't believe you're really here." Letting the door go, she turns around to face him, to look over him on the bed on his back there, shirtless and stuck, his bright blue eyes piercing into her from his inner prison. She takes a deep breath, steadying herself because she seems shaky here, licks her lips and steps forward toward him. "I need your help. And it looks like you could use mine too."

_Elena_, he thinks, wants to say but his tongue won't work. Elena is the only one brave and foolish and naïve enough to come to him and say something like that after all they've been through. But she doesn't look herself. She seems … shaken. Disoriented. Normally, he couldn't give less of a damn about whatever supernatural problematic tragedy she has somehow found her way into the middle of this time, but if anyone would be stupidly and illogically compassionate enough to get him out of this situation despite their history, it is Elena Gilbert.

"I— I didn't think I'd find you," she says, half to herself, speaking softly and breathily as she takes another step closer to the bed, and then another and another, small steps in her absence, fingers drawn up to her temple as her head shakes, swinging brown tresses back and forth. "I didn't think you'd _see_ me. But you do. She said you would, but I didn't really believe her. You're looking right at me. _Klaus_? Tell me you see me."

The expression on the girl's face is so openly vulnerable, so anxious, he knows it would break her heart if he couldn't see her, whatever the hell that means. Sounds like her mind has _already_ broken. He isn't all that surprised. With everything she has been put through in her short life, it was only a matter of time before her sanity cracked for good. But how the hell did she get all the way down to New Orleans without her keeper lapdogs catching up to her with their obsessively concerned butterfly nets? Not that he overlooks kismet. Before she can bolt, or flip out and draw his brother back, he drags his gaze lower as best he can manage through the burn, drawing her attention down his bared chest to the hot angry red scar tearing a straight line down the center of his sternum, spider webbings of aggravated veins showing inflamed beneath the taut paled skin. Evidence of their sins. Their betrayals. His brother's Mark of Cain he gets to bear instead.

"Yeah," she offers softly, sympathetically, "I noticed that too. That's what's keeping you from taunting me, isn't me? I guess you can't help me until I help you." She comes to the edge of the bed then, moving cautiously, not like she is frightened of him but as if she is unsure of her surroundings. She takes another shaky breath and sits down beside him. One hand ventures up, trembling in midair as it hovers, and then he feels the faint brush of cool fingertips ghosting along his chest, faint and muffled through the fevered agony, but detectable and wonderful, the flicker of an out of reach reprieve. As a single tip gently grazes down the angry red line, he hears her murmur, "I really hate witches."

_Me too_, is his dry drawl of a reply, only he hasn't the energy to try voicing it.

"It looks like something is still inside there. Infecting you," she says then, frowning at the scarring in consideration. His eyes widen pointedly, exasperation evident on his face, and Elena turns her frown on him, not happy with that. "Look, I'll do what I can to fix you and all, but you have to help me. I'm— I'm lost. I mean, I'm really lost. And I know there is a lot of bad blood between us, but you're all I've got. You're the only one who sees me. Nobody else can see me. They don't know I'm here. They won't listen. I— I can't do this. Please, Klaus. Please. If you ever— If there was ever anything good in you, anything like mercy or kindness, please, you'll help me find my way home."

_What in God's name are you talking about?_ he wants to snap. Thinks it comes across clearly enough on his face for a sane person to recognize, except she is obviously not one of those anymore. And there are tears. Why does this girl have to cry so much?

"Okay? _Okay_." She is nodding, agreeing with herself, pretending that he has promised. "Alright. I get this thing out of you and help you heal and then you save me."

He wouldn't argue with her even if he could, because she is looking around the room, searching for a proper tool, and when she finds a blade buried in the table drawer nearby, she comes back and holds a knife in trembling hands above his thorax. The girl hesitates to draw in yet another shaky breath, licking her lips again, bracing herself, because there is so much caged energy inside her today, so much nervous restless anxiety, it shudders through her entire body every second. But when she steadily slices the dagger tip through the scarring, carefully reopening the wound, it is straight and quick. She throws the knife fast aside and doesn't shy away from plunging her hand into him between the torn flesh, reaching blindly for the obtrusion.

"Shh! _Shh_," she hushes him, fingers clamping over his mouth to muffle his yell when she drives her other into him, grasping for the weapon. Leaning over the man, she is soft and worried like a fretting loved one, as is her nature, doing what needs to be done even as she murmurs reassurances and insistences on being quiet, on holding on, because she almost has it, she feels something and almost has it, but he has to be quiet, has to hold on until she gets it out. "I'm sorry," she tells him distractedly, sincerely, resting her forehead on the back of her hand where it smothers him, her other foraging around inside his body while he rides out the pain, rigid and arching against her, his throat hoarse and graveled but unable to keep from screaming so she has to press down harder there, muffling him. Turning her head, her temple to her hand on his lips, her fingertips digging into his jaw, she watches herself pull from the gory cavity, an ivory-hilted hex dagger gripped tightly in the bloody mess of her grasp, dripping with tendon and tissue. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I know it hurts. Hold on."

She is a strange creature. He can barely hear her whispers through the screaming pain, the fevered searing heat, but there is not a hint of condescension, no ounce of insincerity about her as instinctive comforts quick escape her lips. Appearing as worn out as he feels, soft cool fingers letting go of his jaw when he stops making pained animal sounds to sift through the short strands of gold hair at his sweat-matted temple, stroking hair and skin like an afterthought action, like she doesn't even notice what she's doing.

It irritates him, surely, because he has no need for such useless things as her cooing. This obnoxiously maternal empathy she manages to find an abundance of for everyone, even her worst enemy, sickening him with this natural saccharine compassion, her caring. He wishes she would just take the bloody thing out and get the job done without all this extraneous affect. And yet, irritated as he is, the hybrid finds himself oddly soothed.

"It's not healing. What is this thing?" she wonders, aghast as she so often is, examining the dagger with disdain on her face before she throws it away, lets it skid across the floor. She skims a careful touch over his ravaged sternum, waiting for the flesh to knit itself up. After a moment, she inhales decisively and the hand skims upward, presenting her wrist at his chin, offering sustenance. "Hurry up," she mutters, glancing anxiously away as she resituates herself on the edge of the bed, perched on her haunches over him. "Come on. Before I change my mind."

He didn't need the pushing. It's just taking a lot of energy to make himself move at all. Catching her arm between hot hard fingertips, he wrenches her closer with a jerk forward that makes her yelp, her palm hitting the headboard above him to keep balanced, and he sinks fast into soft flesh, biting into her delicate wrist with elongated canines, harshly, hungrily, his tired eyes flashing vivid gold and black under hooded lashes. The growl that vibrates inside him, humming in his throat, can't be helped as a gush of her warm blood rushes wetly into his mouth, sucking it down, her face scrunching in pain and hesitation. The fire eases at the first swallow. Beginning to dim. A glimmer of his strength dances at the frayed edges of his grasp. His spine is arching up off the mattress before he knows it, his sternum sewing closed inch by inch, his insides doing the same, her blood gushing in as he drinks deep, pulls hard at the vein, sucking for more, his fingers bruising her bones. His other hand has latched onto her shoulder, holding her near, holding her above him, keeping any thoughts of trying to escape from her mind. But with his wounds half healed and the excruciation of the hex lingering still, fading fast but not fast enough, and hunger becoming more prominent in his awareness, his focus splintering from the pain, from his burning rage, his grip starts sliding across her shoulder to grip her nape in a harsh hold. He pulls from her wrist, head snapping back, tongue running along his lips, catching red as it rivulets. That blood. That warm wet gush of such invigorating relief.

_Petrova blood_.

He remembers completely consuming her the night of the sacrifice. Drinking her in. All of her. The molten electric desire was there. The intoxication. But that hadn't hit him this badly then.

When he goes for her throat, striking before she can react, sinking in his teeth fast and hard and deep, still holding her by the nape, long fingers clenched in her messy dark hair, she has no hope of escape. He takes hold of her more thoroughly, pinning her against him body to body, blood smearing between them, sparks of cool and feverish flesh connecting. Her breath is coming quick and interrupted. Haltingly. But that blood. _That blood_.

He never truly tasted Tatia, and Katerina had an extra kick but nothing to this extent, so he doesn't know if it's due to his weakened state, his delirium, or something about her, but he can't stop drinking her in. His head is spinning. The wolf inside has woken with a ferocity that grips him punishingly, taking control, demanding more. There is no sense, no ration, no stopping. It. Is. _Intoxicating_.

The growl thrumming in his chest grows stronger, reverberating through them both as she writhes in the cage of his grasp, his crushing grip, struggling instinctively against him. The more she fights, all the more the wolf overpowers him, all the more his desire grows, his _need_, and he can't let go. Shoving off the mattress, he flips forward hard with the girl, slamming her down onto her back, bearing down, devouring.

"Hey!" she yelps, shoving at his chest, his shoulders, her pushes halfhearted at best as she becomes dizzy with the loss, with the pulling. "Hey. That's enough. Damn it, Klaus." That feminine rasp has grown thicker, her voice quieter, barely slurring. Her fight fading. Her breaths heavier. Slower. "Klaus…"

Isn't she a vampire now? It shouldn't have this draw. He shouldn't be so taken with it. So driven. The wolf shouldn't be riding him so hard.

_Take her. Take her. Take her._

A prick. The cool solid sting of steel sliding into his stomach. It shakes his head a bit, but he doesn't back off, so she drives the knife deeper, twisting until the hilt smacks into his hip. As he jerks, she brings a knee up to her chest and catches a heel on his shoulder, shoving him off.

"I should've known I couldn't trust you!"

"Elena?" he chimes, a lilting loaded implication, coming onto his knees on the other end of the bed as she pushes druggedly upright, clutching at her bleeding neck, his lips dripping with her blood, his eyes shining primal with the wolf. Glancing down, he takes hold of the hilt and yanks the small blade out of him, wound closing over instantly like it never even happened, his whole expanse of body all but unmarred. Completely recovered. Though danger lurks in his expression, darkening the edges, he is mostly back to himself. Having shaken his head clear. Brow risen, he swipes a hand down his jaw to clean off the remnants of stained blood, saying lightly, "Thank you for the assistance, love."

"Yeah. Sure. No problem," she grumbles, resentment and sarcasm rich about her now. She furls fingers angrily in the bedspread as she turns onto her side and struggles up off her backside, pointedly _not_ shooting him dirty looks. But she is gripping the footboard for support like she wants to crush it asunder. "Can we get out of here? Before your brother comes back and puts that dagger into you again?"

"Why don't you let me worry about Elijah?" he suggests, consideringly narrowing his eyes at her. The mess at her neck hasn't healed yet, but she isn't bleeding out anymore. "Tell me, love, do you feel the werewolf venom setting in yet?"

"I don't think I have to worry about that."

"And why is that?"

"Because I don't think I'm a vampire here."

"And where is _here_ for you?"

"I don't know. That's the problem. That's why I came to you."

Klaus drops backward onto his haunches, head cocked curiously, expression intrigued. "You said no one could see you but me. This is some sort of spell?"

"I don't _know_," she stresses, frustration carrying her anger at him. Then after a second, tempering her emotions, she continues on in a softer resigned vein. "But I don't think so." It isn't like magick. It's like she's _lost_. Just lost. "This isn't me. Not the real me. I'm not like myself anymore. I'm not actually here. _Your_ here, I mean. I'm somewhere else. And it gets dark a lot. Dark and cold and _empty_ and awful. Nobody hears me. I keep screaming and it just echoes. There are these woods. It's dark and cold and lonely and so _quiet_. I get stuck. For days, I don't know, I'm stuck just wandering in circles. I can't find my way out again. And then the screams start. It's so quiet, so deafeningly silent, and then the screams start. In the distance, I hear them, I hear them all screaming in pain and dying and I can never reach them! I'm just _stuck_." Great. Fucking great. The girl's crying again. Broken, roughly, haltingly, she says, "My mom, and my dad, and my aunt, and my uncle, and my brother, and everybody, screaming and screaming somewhere far away and I can't _get_ to them." She looks up at him then, amber eyes wet and heartbroken, expression drawn taut in pain and anguish, hand gripping at her chest, fingers furling there like she can clutch herself, keep herself together, from falling apart. "Outside the woods, when I find someone, I can never get them to know I'm there. They can't see me. They can't feel me. Please, Klaus." God, not this again. "Please, you have to help me. I can't— I can't _stay_ here."

"It sounds like you're dead."

"But I'm not. I know I'm not. This isn't the other side."

"How do you know?"

"You're here," she tells him, looking at him again, straight at him, seeing through him with those awful Petrova eyes.

And she has him there. If she were dead, she wouldn't be here with him. He couldn't touch her. _Drink_ her. No, she isn't dead. She is as real as he is. Which means she must be crazy again. He hasn't the time to deal with a whackjob doppelgänger right now. He has his revenge to see to, after all. So he says, "Yes. Well. Good luck with that."

"Klaus!" she panics, and suddenly she is on her knees on the opposite edge of the bed, catching his hand between both her own after he has gotten to his feet and turned to go. The catch stills him, makes him look back, look down at where delicate trembling fingers cradle his hand, clinging to him. That soft cool touch. That profound imploring quality to it all. These moments are so rare. These glimpses of Elena. Having that proud spirit lower, opening to him without a shred of dignity to her, pleading with him, has always been one major weakness of the hybrid's. "You can't leave me like this. You _can't_. She promised you would help me. She promised!"

"She?" he asks, turning back toward her at this, caught by curiosity.

"She said you would see me. She said you would help me." Unfolding her legs out from underneath her, Elena sits at the very edge, still hanging gently onto his hand, looking up with those unguardedly devastating eyes. "She said you owe us."

Deceptively mellow, he informs her, "I owe you nothing, Elena."

"She said _you owe us_," she repeats, firmer now, insisting on it, like he is supposed to understand what that means, but he doesn't. And he doesn't care to. But she won't let up. Stubborn, stubborn girl, and her forever naïve faith in monsters. "She said to come to you. To find you. She said you would help me. She said you would _know_!"

"Enough, Elena. Enough," he snaps, shaking free of her touch, shaking out of the daze that held him up this long. That distracted him. "I don't have time for this."

Swallowing hard, she hurries, "She said— She told me to call you Nikos."

The words are quiet when they reach him, crash into his back after he has turned from the panicked teary girl dripping with the intensity of achingly unadulterated desperation. They hit him and he is frozen. _Nikos_. He hasn't heard that in a millennia. Elijah calls him _Niklaus_ with a sedated undertone of reprimand. Rebekah says _Nik_ in that hollow affection of hers. But no one calls him Nikos. No one. "Where did you hear that name?"

"I told you—"

"_Where did you hear that name, Elena_?" he thunders, suddenly turned back around to face her, suddenly crouched before the upset girl with his hands harsh around her throat. Gripping dangerously, madly, his senses forgotten.

"You know," she chokes out, her expression smooth, defiant even, not flinching within his crushing grasp, not able to breathe but still not flinching.

"_Come along quickly, Nikos. Lest you lose me," she lilts teasingly over her shoulder, unkempt acres of chestnut curls flying behind her like the skirts of her gown as she runs, chasing playfully through the trees. His catches up easily, indulging her the pursuit by not ending things too soon, but when his arm snakes around her from behind, pulling the girl up off her feet, swinging her through the air, the huskily happy laughter which escapes her then is worth whatever punishment he will meet by Father when he returns, whatever bruises he should carry in the next weeks for sneaking away with the Petrova temptress._

_People think she is lesser, think she is fallen, because she has a child and no husband, because every man near these lands is enchanted at the sight of her. But he knows they are all wrong. She is pure and innocent and wild, and so wonderful, and he doesn't want to live without her a moment longer. Where they see a fatherless child and a cheap woman, he sees a mother who would die for her daughter, who would kill for her before she lets harm come, and he sees the beauty that goes deep into her soul that draws them all to her to begin with. She cares for his brother, and this hurts, because everyone always prefers Elijah, but she is no cruel creature to divide their affections. She loves Niklaus._

_They reach the edge of the land together, coming toward the cliff, and she wriggles free of his trapping arm to yank her gown over her head and throw a challenging look over her shoulder at the young man. The next second, she has dove over the edge, falling freely into the rushing falls of crystal water. As she surfaces, laughing that chiming genuine happiness, she calls for him to follow._

"_Nikos!"_

_She makes him happy. She soothes away the hurts and the fears of his father. Of being unwanted within the family. Being the lesser, set apart from his siblings, forever cast out. She quells every heartache. As much as he loves them fiercely, his brothers, his sweet sister, he loves her more. If anyone tried to take her from him, he would kill to keep her._

Torn from memory, his hands have wrenched apart, and her neck is broken before he realizes what he has done. Elena drops back onto the bed, unkempt chestnut waves splay around her like a dark silken halo, her eyes closed and her head turned to the side with an expressionless peace on her familiar face. That _hated_ Petrova face. And there is hate there, centuries old hate awakened in fiery intensity, burning through him, but there is more to it than that sentiment. There always is. He bites into his wrist, almost the second he sees her lying lifeless, tears open the flesh and shoves it into her mouth, sharing his blood with troublesome doppelgänger, the stupid girl who drives him crazy, massaging her throat to make her swallow. Getting it in before her heart stops.

_I don't think I'm a vampire here._

He hates her. He hates what she represents. He hates how conflicted the sight of her always makes him. It wasn't ever this difficult with Katerina. It wasn't ever this complex. Which is why he never hated Katerina half as much as he hates Elena.

Her eyes open slowly, sedately, finding his piercing blue stare bearing down on her as his arm supports her neck, holding her half upright off the mattress. His face is etched in hard lines and sharp edges, an ancient Roman god cast from stone, nothing like kindness or concern softening those features right now. Resentment runs strong from him for this. For making him so conflicted. For complicating things. He doesn't know why he is here, why he is sticking around, and he doesn't like that about himself. Especially when her low soft voice whispers, "I helped you." Then, "You help me."

Klaus skates his gaze down, chin toward his chest, brow furrowing at the sight of her hand settled above his heart. He clamps her wrist in pinching fingers and pulls it off him, pressing it down, confused and disgruntled. Disconcerted. This is an Elena he has never seen before. Never known. A lost girl. A girl with nothing left. No past. No future. Just this moment here and her despair and hope warring with his reluctance. His nature.

"I'm not one of your blinded white knights, sweetheart. I don't do your bidding simply because you expect us all to fall at your feet." He stands, pushing away from her, slipping free of her weight. "I don't care about your problems. I have my own."

His back is to her when she lifts tentatively off her back, propped by her palms above quivering arms, weak and subdued from her earlier frantic energy. He seeks the decanter set on a tray with tumblers at an antique end table below a Merisi painting. Her low voice wavers when she says, "You can't leave me." Tension in his shoulders tightens, simmering anger in his bones making long pianist fingers clench about the crystal he holds, trying to bring it up to his lips for a gulp of scorching liquor. "I don't know if I'll be able to find you again if you go."

Mildly, not turning around, he takes a sip, wetting red lips, and wonders, "Where has all your pride gone, love? That annoying righteous fire?"

"In case you didn't notice, _Klaus_," she bites back, "I haven't had pride since I went off that bridge and drowned." _Thanks to your sister_.

"The dead never rest," he murmurs musingly, swallowing another sip of rich amber. He only half turns yet, resting a palm to the edge of the antique, leaning a hip against it, swirling his drink in thoughtful consideration. "If I'm the only one that sees you, when is it you were told all this? Where you heard that name."

"In the woods. She came to me in the woods. Once."

"Those silent screaming woods?" he quips, with a wry wing of one eyebrow.

"At first I thought she was Katherine. Maybe Amara. But then I knew…"

"Knew what?"

Elena doesn't say anything more. His eyes go up and aside to find her face clouded, drifting off somewhere, a melancholy confusion about her like the haunting blank slate of a ghost. But she isn't a ghost. She can't be. The veil is firmly in place. He wouldn't be able to touch her. Feel her. Hell, he wouldn't even be able to see her. But then so why does she sound so much like a lost soul?

"You're saying she is still here," he challenges, even as he fights it himself, even though he swore himself to avoid this, to not press this issue, not chase shadows down this path, going against everything he has held onto for the last thousand years of savage eternity. "The ghost by my side."

The girl looks up, refocusing on him, pulled back from the darkness to sharp attention by his laidback mocking lilt. There is a dangerous seriousness inside him, underneath this ever disaffected exterior, a dark almost desperate intensity straining to be let loose below. It very nearly matches her own.

"You don't understand. I can't— I— I _can't_." She has her legs pulled up onto the bed, her feet hooked at the edge, her arms locked around her knees. Calmer than she had been but climbing back towards that franticness with every word, she has difficulty getting out what she is saying. Keeps stopping suddenly. Restarting. "You don't get it. This isn't right. This isn't _death_," she tells him, fingers furling into her shins, clutching almost by clawing. He almost feels for the pathetic thing. "There is no peace in this. No rest. I thought it was a way out, when it came, but this isn't death. This is just— This is _torment_."

"Yes, and I wouldn't know anything about that."

"Klaus. I'm serious. I ended yours, didn't I? Why can't you help me end mine?"

"Why should I?" he counters evenly. "I promised that you would pay for Kol's death." He takes a debating drink from his tumbler, cants his head, and suggests, "Perhaps this is the perfect how."

"You knew I was sorry for that. I'm _still_ sorry," she grounds out, genuine emotion in her deep cracking voice. "I never wanted Kol to die. But I had to protect _my_ brother and _you_ wouldn't help us." Biting into her bottom lip, she shakes her head, rocking back a bit, brushing tousled hair from her face as she sucks in a sharp breath. "Don't you know that broke my heart, seeing you standing there in the doorway like that, knowing you had to see him burn. And hear his screams." She is remembering something else as she says this, two separate horrific tragic events superimposed onto each other, and he knows what she is saying she means. Absurd as it is, she means every word. She is a strange creature that way. "Even after everything you've done to me, to the people I love, it _hurt_ to have to do that to you." She sniffs, expression hardening slightly, adding accusingly, "Which is more than can be said for _you_ and _your family_."

Here she is again, crying at him. Quiet tears streaking her beautiful face. That hated remembered face. Those wet familiar haunting eyes. He doesn't have the patience for this. But can't seem to find his voice.

"My mom and dad in that car in the water. The dark. You driving a stake into Jenna. Alaric trying to kill us. Isobel burning alive right in front of me. John dead on the porch outside so that _I_ could live. And Jeremy … _Jeremy_. I keep going back to that damned cave. Keep seeing him lying there in the dark. Bloody. His eyes are open and staring and _dead_. He just lies there. He just … lies there." She looks up at him again. Looks up at him with those damned eyes. "I can't go back to that place. I can't go back to those places, Klaus." And it gets to him. Damn her. It _bothers_ him. He wants to go. He wants to get back to his own life. His own troubles. He thought he'd escaped the Petrova curse, leaving her there behind him in Mystic Falls, letting her go. Yet here she is. Back again. Sucking him back into that endless cycle. "I smell the burnt flesh and I feel the water in my lungs and I hear their screaming and there is _nothing_ I can to do save them. To save myself." He has never given a damn about her sob stories. Everyone has them. But the cursed girl knows how to keep his attention when she wants it. Keep him here when he wants to leave. Trapped by the promise of her offerings, a promise he never wanted, a girl he never gave a damn for. "Please. _Please_. I can't take this."

And then she lets go of her legs, drops them down, slides herself suddenly off his bed and down hard onto the floor, onto her knees on the floor before him like something out of one of his more self-forbidden sadistic fantasies come to life. Her face is damp and torn ragged and raw by desperation, by despair and panic and hate and love and uncertainty in twisted tangled forms shining from dark unguarded eyes, open for the whole world to see. He always knew she was most beautiful when she cries. Breathtakingly beautiful, if a man was to go into that sort of thing. Which he won't. But he knows it is solely an Elena trait. It wasn't so the rare occasions Katerina truly cried. Only Elena. She wears her heartbreak, her grief and tragedy, in beauty like others wear their smiles. He never cared much for her wide sunny smiles, pretty and rare creatures that they were, but her tears are appreciable. Even if he hasn't the patience for them.

Like today. He wants to walk away. He wants to _look_ away. But he finds himself stuck. Fixed in place by her display.

"I've begged you for one little thing so many times," she says, one hand coming up to rest on her chest, on her heart, like trying to grab onto it, trying to clutch, the other fisted against her thigh, a denim miniskirt tight about her hips, short leather jacket layered over her low-cut crimson blouse. She looks like a college girl at a party. Only she looks nothing like that at all. "I begged you not to use Jenna in your sacrifice. I did everything you asked. I gave you my life. I gave you _everything_." Which is true. She could have done a Katerina. She could have run. Left her friends and family to be slaughtered through his retribution. But that isn't this girl. This girl has never run from him. This girl _comes_ to him. This girl gets down on her knees and begs the man. When she has no reason to hope for sympathy. For his help or his mercy. Beyond all reason, all logic, this girl hangs all her faith on him. "I begged you to let Stefan go. I begged you to help me save my brother. And you never— You _never_ could show me even that much leeway."

"You mistake me for a Salvatore," he tells her, finally finding his voice, finding a cheap taunting tone, "I have no use for you."

This makes her face cringe harsher, makes a rough sob escape her once, weepy voice gaining strength, gaining fire. "I've saved your life … so many times. I half cut my throat to protect you!" she angrily accuses, fiercely accuses him. "And here I am again on my knees. _Literally_ on my knees. Begging you. Do it differently just this once. Don't— Don't punish me because of my face. Because of _her_. I'm. _Begging_. You." She can't catch her breath now. Emotion chokes tight in her throat so strongly that she nearly can't ground the words out between her shuddering sobbing distress. "Help me."

"Help yourself," he answers flatly after a moment of silence, broken only by her cries, by her harsh ragged gasps for breath, speaking softly, quietly, but he sets down his glass on the table behind him and pushes off, crossing the meager distance between them then. Head cocked, blue eyes intent and fixated, he watches her breakdown, watches her suffer. Enjoys it even as it bothers him, even as the fact that it bothers him bothers him more so, setting off contradictions all the way through him now.

Trembling still, her strangled sobs subside and her paroxysm quells, fading in strength and sheer intensity. Calming in the aftermath of a swell. He lowers himself to a crouch in front of her with a sigh. Brushes cool calloused fingertips across the arc of her cheekbone, dusting dark tendrils behind her ear. She is heated as he has chilled. Their roles reversed. Or maybe she was always this hot and the burning fever taken hold of him made her feel so refreshing. Made her touch into a relief.

"_Don't_," she says, so softly he hardly hears her, eyes shuttered, lips parted, breaths hot and heavy and slow. His fingers slide through the silk of her hair, down past the ear until he can drag the pad of a thumb against her throat, her collarbone, pulling the jacket aside only an inch or so. She shivers at the graze, at his penetrating restraint, sucking another shuddering breath into her, letting it out jaggedly.

Long fingers furl painstakingly in leather lapels, urging her toward him as he leans in, his gaze drawn low to her waiting mouth. Fixated, for the moment, for this sharp second. She pulls her head back, glancing sharply in surprise, in suspicious shock, studying him, searching for answers, for explanations, for sense when there is none. His grip tightens, forcing her forward, and she reaches behind her, catching the edge of the bed in her fists, bunching the bedspread in her white-knuckled grasp, her head angling to the side as her lashes lower once more, avoiding his advance with heady struggling hesitance. He leans in ever closer, ever slower, cornering her centimeter by centimeter. Their breaths mingle. He reaches for her with his mouth, straining patiently for her lips, pursuing her to a kiss. But her eyes are closed and her face is pained, a weary calm come over the girl, not quite as crazy as she seems, so her head turns to the left when he nears, and he follows her left, so she turns right, and he goes right, so she leans back, tipping her chin skyward while he slowly steadily chases her down, wears away her resistance.

Pivoting with a drop onto his knees, he straightens, becoming so taller than her here, towering over her fallen form. He lets go of her jacket with a snap and catches her cheeks between ten pressing fingers, coming down onto her mouth from above with harshness, with bruising insistence that steals her shaky breath from her lungs, from her lips when he captures them in another form of torment, another form of attack. He tastes of whisky and blood, _her blood_, and the wet heat threatens to lull them into a haze while the spark of electric charge that ignites with a viciousness at the chemistry connect amps them up. His grip turns harsh, clenching forcefully, pulling her harder against him in a sudden jerk. Fingers flexing, she lets go of the bed and flings her arms forward, jolted into the intensity of the touch, grabbing hold of his bare shoulders, digging meanly into the corded muscle. Her mouth opens under his, her body arching upward, pushing herself into him stronger. She gasps into his kiss, his tongue sliding in to stroke against her own as she does, his hot gentle approach torturous and taunting. Mocking her. Always mocking her. Every single word he says. Every move he makes.

Hate simmers between them. Attraction denied. Punishing in their embrace as they cling to each other, pushing and pulling and ripping each other apart, giving into the ugly and the feverish. As the floodgates open, releasing with a dizzying rush, everything grows to be a blur between them. A hazy hurry of angry frantic want. Darkly destructive desire. He shoves the jacket off her shoulders, tugs it down her arms, throws it aside as he kisses her fever high, delving hungrily into her, _taking_ and demanding from her. His fingers tear loose the button on her waistband. Wrench the blouse up over her head. She breaks away so he can, breaking off from his mouth with a gasp, head shaking her tangled tresses free. Amber eyes hooded and burning with the fervor, she casts a mindless glance down across his half clad frame as his hands drop to her hips, her fingers fumbling at his belt buckle as he shoves her back, hoisting her up just enough to get her past the edge of bed and up flat on her back on its expanse beneath him. Kissing and clinging and clawing and writhing as they wrench through animal need together.

Shimmying her skirt up her hips, he spreads her thighs, hooks those long legs around his waist when she gets his belt undone, shoving tight black jeans out of her way. He rips her bra down the middle with an easy yank, delicate white lace cast aside as he strips her all the way down. In the rush, in the haze, she looks up once, only once in the midst of it, and finds those striking cerulean eyes gone, overtaken by the burnt gold and demon black of his animal nature. She hesitates, if just a split second of sense, of wary guard coming up where a moment ago and a moment from now there was nothing but primitive insanity. He doesn't notice, or if he does, he certainly doesn't care. It isn't until he gets inside her, shoving headlong into the tight searing heat of her with a single abrupt thrust, that they both falter, freezing significantly as the invasion, at the shock, both pulling apart a little to look into each other's eyes, to share the surprise, the jarring unexpectedness of it all. They freeze and go rigid, neither sure of what took them over, what has hold of them still. Panting for breath, chests heaving drastically, a vehement violence lingering in the spaces between them, in their connection.

Then he moves. Sinking deeper into her, slowly submersing until he is swallowed to the very hilt and their hips meet, her fingernails digging into his biceps as she holds on, drawing blood. Neither looks away, keeping the contact, sharing this strange situation. This mad monumental moment. Her inner walls clench crushingly around him while he refuses to move, to pull out and plunge in, but just stills, torturing someone, her or him. Or _them_. Acclimating. After a minute, he draws achingly away, inch by inch, so her knees hitch higher at his sides, her back arching off the bed. Strung like a bow.

"_I'm insane_," she murmurs breathily as he goes, head turning to the side, face burying in his arm where he props himself above her, eyes screwing shut, one hand traveling up the tense muscled contours from his bicep to his shoulder to the curve of his neck where she latches on, sinking in her nails, fingers half tangling in the fringes of his golden curls, all cropped away and washed out as they are. Mouth moving against the heat of his flesh, she mutters mindlessly, "I've gone insane and this is hell." Then, "You're evil."

"Yes, love. Very much so," he pants back, hovering above her, just inches from her face as he thrusts back into her so hard their hips collide with a painful smack and she arches upward again on an involuntary jerk, crying out at him, a sound he captures with his lips, swallowing her pain and protest and pleasure for himself.

He should be hunting down his traitorous little sister. Repaying honorable Elijah for daggering him with that hexed ivory. He should be doing a hundred other things instead of indulging his weaker half in a harsh primal taste of saintly Elena. He has had plenty of hate sex. He doesn't need this. He doesn't want to tempt himself with this absolute mess. And yet he buries himself inside her, again and again, deeper and harder, driving into her with vicious brutal force, his wolf riding strong again. Hunger eats at him. _Need_ calls him. Telling him he has to have his way, he has to have this, have her, and so he fucks the girl, lets her clutch and cling to him, making delicious despised sounds, growing vehemence violently from every thrusting intrusion.

May as well be a rutting animal for all he pretends at control, feigns his usual mocking as long as he can salvage it, driven unraveled fairly quickly, devolving into the wolf with his rushing haze. His intensity.

She is shivering and shaking as she cries into his open-mouthed kiss, arching upward so tautly she should snap, moving in tandem with him as he drives her further up the bed, rocking its entire frame, bloody streaks breaking free of their torn skin as rivulets while claws making dragging marks and teeth find ridges and curves to sink into, to tear open. She is a senseless maddening mess but she meets him force for force. Riding it out along as he comes undone against her.

They collapse in a heap of sweaty tangled limbs and harshly heaving chests. _Not dead_. _Definitely not dead_, he thinks, face buried in her throat, in her soft tousled chestnut hair, fingers still bruising her skin where they grip her hip, her thigh, going up to her shoulder. His canines pierce flesh, drinking her in again, a calmer less ravenous pull as blood rivers, spilling down her bare chest, over her shoulder down her back, lying twisted on her side as she gasps to catch her breath, to recover from the paroxysm. There is no chance of this girl being a ghost. He knew it before, but now he _really_ knows it.

"Not so pure anymore, sweet doppelgänger," he murmurs thickly into the cooling heat of her neck, drawling tauntingly. "Now that you've let the devil defile you."

"Case you hadn't noticed," she pants, drowsy yet disturbed, edged in that familiar fire, "I lost _pure_ a ways back on the road."

"Then what are you now? Fallen angel? Gotten herself soiled with the sins of earth?" he lilts at her, striving lightly for a reaction, a revulsion, grazing the bridge of his nose up against the shell of her ear so that she shudders, his fingers creeping low and lower down the feminine length of her body, brushing past her pelvis to venture into the slick swollen heat below. Her breath hitches. Her blood still drips from his lips. "_Is that it_?"

"Soaked in sin," she assents, half deliriously, not playfully even a little. She catches his wrist in a sharp grasp, stilling him, and turns her head to look at the complicated hybrid over her shoulder, molded to her back as he is, tangled up in her. "I never was an angel, but I used to be _good_. Maybe I was fooling myself, but I thought I was good."

"You were."

"_You_ had a lot to do with making me this way."

"Oh? And which way would that be?"

"Worthless," she bites, whispering the epitaph against his jaw. He tries to grip her hip, flip her toward him, but she beats him to the punch, twisting his touch off by the knuckle as she turns, being caught by the shoulders and flipped back, rolled further once more in a halfhearted argument for control, for domination. He winds up on top of her again and wedges his hips between her legs, forcing them wide again to accommodate his presence, her arms locking over his shoulders, fingers twisting in the short strands of his gold hair. He ducks in, finding her throat again, nosing up under her chin to bite through the flesh. Galvanized, she cinches her legs strong around him and shoves off, flipping sideways with him as she rolls on top to straddle his hips, her palms flattening against his chest when he tries to surge up to bruise her lips, shoving him back down.

Those wolf eyes flash up at him. She meets them with a level expression.

"Tell me, love," he begins, his lilted British tone idle, his brow rising with faint affect, hands finding her hips once more, bruising the olive hue, branding his mark into them. "Do you feel betrayed by yourself? By your own body as it craves a monster like me."

"And you feel victorious," she asserts, rolling her hips painfully slow against him as she makes her claim. "Like you've conquered the ultimate ungettable."

"But you're not such a prize anymore, is that it? Fallen too far? Lost your shine?"

"Something like that. Yeah."

"Grip me in your hands, love. Show me how you've changed," he tells her, baiting her, those blue eyes cold and cruel as they taunt the naked hailed Petrova girl astride his lap. "You're not as lost as you think."

"I am," she argues, her gritting teeth and her parting lips fighting against the thought, her arching spine resistant to the suggestion. If she is still herself, still the pure and good Elena that everybody loved, she wouldn't be here, wouldn't let _him_ touch her.

"Hurts to think of, doesn't it?" he barbs, leaning upwards, trailing his lips up her body as his hands graze soft curves, grasping at warm ridges. "That you might still be that girl. That that girl perhaps was just never all she had been chalked up to be."

"Shut up," she tells him, softly, meaninglessly, silencing his next taunt with a cold kiss. A hot and wet and silken slow kiss that is cold and mean uncharacteristically of any girl in the running of maybe being who _she_ is. She strokes her tongue into his mouth and sighs. She twists her fingers in his hair and she bites his lip. But she does grip him in her hand. After a minute, after a quiet provoking kiss, she grasps her fingers around the thick of his burgeoning cock and strokes him, up and down along its length in slow enticing motions. It isn't like giving him what he asked for. It's like a calm heartfelt _fuck you_.

"One of us is going down," he tells her, whispering against her swollen lips while she strokes him, holds him in a small hand cool to the touch, soft and striking. "One of us was always going to have to go down."

"One or the other," she agrees, not bothering to open her eyes, to pull away from him. "Eventually. In the end."

"Soon," he amends, reaching to her shoulders, brushing brown curls off the set of each to expose the graceful column of her bloodied throat, of her collarbone, breasts rising and falling gently with her sedated breaths now. Then on a more teasing tone, he provokes, "I'd like to see you back on your knees, love, if you don't mind. Beg me again."

"Fuck you," she says outright this time, but it lacks venom, loses in vehemence as her eyes flutter practically shut and her breath hitches, body arching into him when he grabs hold of her sides, bracketing her ribcage, and pulls her down. Voice choked, she gets out the words just barely, brokenly, "You're not going to help me. I saved you and you're not going to get me out of this godforsaken place." Her fingertips bite into his neck, his abs, squeezing him hard. Almost weepy again, "You're going to leave me here."

"I may not. I may come find you. For the hell of it. For some fun."

"Fuck you," she says again, broken and desperate, head dropping back from her neck, body bowing against him, chest to chest flush, sinking down to envelope him fully now. "Fuck you. I hate you. I hate you."

"Say my name, love. Say it."

"No," she keens, resentful and grudging when his hand splays widely at the center dip of her back and pushes her forward into him, when her head tips back down and her lips find his face, kissing and grazing and caressing without affection, without love, in some sick perverse form of railing hatred. A hatred so intense, so overwhelming and impossible that it escapes softly, expresses like physical worship. She is so confused. She is so crazy. "Klaus," she breathes, completely accidentally, brokenly, emotionally, breathing his name in a sequence of scathing syllables, only they don't sound scathing when they come from her rasping hitching voice, because they sound more like powerless pleading.

"_Consume me. Niklaus, you consume me. __Mereu a mea__. Always mine, Nikos." She pulls him closer as they lay tangled together beside the falls, lying beneath a sprawling old oak, murmuring sweet nothings into his ear to calm him down, even as her body instigates him all over again. Her touch is like fire, like ice all at once, igniting in his bloodstream, burning into him down to the bone. Waking the beast inside._

_He loves her. Odin, he loves her. He can't live without her. He won't. "Mine," he growls into her skin, gripping her close._

_The girl smiles, welcoming his assault, but it is a sad smile. "Always. Forever, my love."_

_There is nothing in this world I would not do for you_, he recalls himself proclaiming. That former version of a man, who died a millennia ago, buried in the makeshift grave beside a mystic girl that played him for a fool, played his love off his brother's and tore the two apart, whatever pathetic foolishness he might have believed while she breathed, while she had him fixed in the web from her spell. Remembers the warm afternoon which brought the words to his lips. The falls sparkling as sunlight reflected off rushing water to provide a muffled hum of soundtrack to their lovemaking. The boy he was, he doesn't like to think about it. The _idiot_ he used to be. The colossal fool.

Elena reminds him of that man. Maybe it is part of why he hates her so.

For a moment, merely a moment, he becomes devastatingly gentle with her. It makes her ache. It makes the pain amplify into sharp sweetness. Reminding her of every broken thing about her. About them. It sharpens longing that hollows out the inside of her now. Longing for … _something_. Something she doesn't even know. Something to do with _him_, for some inexplicable reason, some unfathomable insanity. And she wonders if that was his intention all along. If it was meant to be a new way to be punishing.

Mojo witchcraft weaves around him. Witchcraft unlike the witches and their hexes of vile slinging tricks. Witchcraft wholly unique to just this one little girl, to her predecessor, a magick so much more insidious than anything a witch could conjure. That is the power of this hated face. The power of the Petrova curse.

_Baptized by your kiss and now I'm born again._ But he can't quite figure out which one of them it might apply to. His … or hers.

There is a reason he goes for the bubbly simple blondes, after all. The young girls with young souls, with their fair hair and light eyes, wrapped up in their unburdened attitudes. He finds himself infatuated with Carolines and Camilles for _good reason_. Fixates on them. _Obsesses_ over them. Because they are nothing in this world like an Elena. Like a Petrova. Because they don't have the dark Petrova eyes that haunt and the tortured old souls that carry so much weight around from one life into the next. They remind utterly _nothing_ of the cursed Petrovas. And that is a wonderful thing. They remind somewhat of his sister. And you can't get any farther from Tatia Petrova than a girl like Rebekah. Then yet still, after all these years, all these fierce ruthless resistances of his, he finds himself toying with that precipice once more, of falling back into that Petrova trap.

Well, it won't happen. He won't do it again. He _won't_.

Arms and legs locked tight around him, Elena comes down hard on him as he thrusts up into her, his hands skating her collarbone, taking hold of her face, her neck and cheeks in a tangle of messy hair and sticky skin, and throws her head back in a seize of sensation, her body falling apart into melting boneless shuddering as she climaxes. Heaving breaths, she collapses forward, splaying limply against him, her arms draped over his shoulders as weak legs come undone around his waist, hiding her unmasked face in his neck. She rests her chin on his shoulder and her temple to his hair, eyes closed, expression sated, her grip on him going lax. Just panting through the comedown. But when his hold on her tightens, she digs her fingers into muscle down his back and preempts him. "_Don't_," she pants out, hard and sharp and tired, licking her lips, brooking no dissent, "Don't move."

Klaus falls still, for a moment at least, his hands grazing absently over her, his chuckle vibrating from his chest into hers, a thrum of male satisfaction. But indulgence only goes so far and he isn't feeling particularly obliging of her at this time. He glides a hand up her bowed back, sweeping under the long dark mane to fist a handful at the nape of her neck and yank her head off his shoulder, forced backward at an angle to expose her face to him as he pivots up suddenly onto his knees and pushes them forward, dropping her down flat on her back beneath him again.

"How far do you think this little indiscretion will take you, darling?"

"Go to hell," she murmurs, as he comes down to her, bringing their faces almost flush, but it is hollow and distracted, her lashes hardly lifted at all. The insinuation is one made lightly anyway. He knows her too well to assume she gave into him to gain herself favor. Knows that she knows _him_ well enough to understand that it wouldn't make a difference to what he chooses to do.

As he kisses her, delving deeply into a slow heated exchange of open mouths and taut interlocked bodies, he slides a faint instigative touch along her slender shoulder up along her arm and farther, brushing over the pounding pulse in her wrist before spreading hand to hand against the palm, entwining their fingers, clenching together and pressing down into the mattress as he rises over her for leverage, her free hand dragging down his back. The hands keep clasped, cast from attention, while they finish off and afterward, after he pumps in and out of her slow and strikingly, taking himself over the edge with gold eyes and black whites, canines extended as lush red lips pull back through the itching urge to bite down, sink in and drink deep again. He doesn't. He tenses, shuddering into orgasm, and then collapses heavy on top of her, burying his face under her jaw, in dark hair that smells of sweat and sex and strawberries. He breathes for a minute, resting there on her, feeling the faint solid presses of her palm at the small of his back, of her fingers twisted tightly with his own, of her inner thighs hugging his hips, her calves draped lazily over the backs of his legs, her breasts flattened beneath his chest, her stomach against his own, her cool damp lips resting absently against the taut tendon stretching across his shoulder. Then he moves off, rolling onto his back beside her, sprawled the wrong way over the bed in their haphazard volatile intimacy.

Elena turns onto her side, free fingers cutting across his chest to trace the black tattoo stretching unevenly over his far shoulder, her eyes half shut. Catching their breaths back and cooling in the dark calming afterglow. After awhile of quiet, she sets her cheek up on his bicep and reveals, "She said you should let it in."

He doesn't ask who. Just, "Let what in?"

"The love." The scoff that harrumphs through him at that assertion jostles her perch, so she elaborates, "I know it sounds stupid, but that is what she said. I don't mean _this_ or anything like that. She said you held onto the pain. That you kept that with you, grew it, spread it around, but you let go of the love. The part of you that balanced out the vicious. The hurt. She said you should let it back in. That it would make all the difference."

"Tell her it isn't her business," he retorts, a flippant dismissive mocking that comes off his lips after a telling hesitation of silence, comes off a little too hard to be playing it cool. But the words themselves are pointed and layered with message.

With not much of a reaction, Elena only releases a slow sigh and draws her touch back along his chest, retracting the way those gentle exploring fingers came, and she turns over until her back is to him, locked hands still clasped loosely overhead, her neck resting atop the unfurled prop of his arm. She doesn't say anything more, doesn't beg or persuade with every advantage she might think she has, because she knows it is pointless and being here with him has lessened the crushing suffocating weight bearing down on her of being _here_. Of being _gone_. The longer she lingers in this room with him, seeing her and touching her, making her real again, the less it overwhelms. She knows, in the back of her awareness, she knows the second he walks away it will all rush back in, but for now she just holds on. And begging won't change his mind. Sex won't ingratiate her to him. He'll do whatever he feels like doing. Like always. No particular rhyme or reason about it. Rather than let that cruel random helplessness drive her crazy, push her into madness, she closes her eyes and breathes in and out with slow deep strokes, memorizing the sensation of skin on her skin, of warmth and life against her. The scratch of his sandy shadowed jaw across her shoulder or the thump of his heart thrumming at her back. The electricity of his hands on her flesh and his body alongside hers. The reality of _that_. The _grounding_ quality of it.

"So how is it you got to New Orleans then, love?" he wonders, out of the blue, stirring her back from her sleepy sated daze. "Did you drive down? Take a bus? A plane?"

"I'm not delusional, Klaus."

"I didn't suggest you were."

"Yes, you did."

"Your heart doesn't pump," he whispers thickly, upsettingly, mouth brushing her ear as he says it, as he reaches his unencumbered hand over her shoulder and places his palm flat above where her heart should be. "You heal, but too slowly," he adds, chin ghosting so faintly over the drying blood smeared and streaked all over her throat and her shoulders, emphasizing the fact that where a ravaged mess of broken skin should is merely smooth beneath all that blood. "You don't taste of death." And then, lower still, liltingly caressing in a way that makes her shiver, "_I_ don't think you're a vampire here either."

"Which means…"

"Which means something is definitely going on. It isn't all in your head. We just don't know precisely _what_ yet."

"Yet?" she asks softly, keeping the hope from her cadence.

Pressing the shape of his playful taunting smile into the softness of her shoulder back, he retorts, "Come now, love. Surely the Salvatores and the rest of your ragtag rescuers will figure things out for the distressed damsel and save the day. They always do."

"They don't even know I'm gone."

"How is that possible?"

Elena doesn't answer. Not because she won't, but because she can't.

"You feel it too, don't you," she guesses, believes, half asleep in his arms accidentally. "The pull. That thing that let me find you. That thing that made you see me when no one else in the world does. It's like a tether."

"I don't feel anything, love." His voice is soft, brushing against her skin like a cold kiss, but it lacks his usual believability in its coolly mocking dismissal.

Letting him curl his arm inward, corralling her smoothly into him, trapped against his chest in the vice of his arms, warm and solid and horribly wonderful because of who he is, who _they_ are, proving her only respite, her life preserver, and like some cruel cosmos joke, she clings to it. Revels in it when she should revile. "You're my bridge to the real world." Because her life is perverse and ironic and awful and agonizing like that. "Don't leave me." Shutting her eyes, she feels the drift, feels all the tangible slipping away again, leading her back toward the woods. The darkness. "Please don't leave me."

_Why did it have to be you?_

He might as well roll his eyes for all he listens, for all the reverence he feels for her in her fear, her tired despair. He props his chin on her shoulder and hikes his brow up with a debating sigh. Recalling something she said before, something that stuck out, he asks her, lightly wondering about it, "Who is Amara?"

But she is gone. Just … gone. Suddenly there is no girl in his arms, no pleasant warmth from the soft touch of her skin, no slender feminine contours pressed against him in bed, wrapped around him, keeping him tethered. There is no continuing tickle in his throat as her provocative blood lingers in aftertaste, richening his veins, coating his nerves like fire, like a drugging high. There is no girl in his arms, no bloodstained bedspread or half drunk glass of whisky on the end table across the room. There is only the prostrated hybrid lying helpless on his back atop an empty bed, an empty room, a door left ajar by his brother as he left him here to rot.

Klaus doesn't know why, for a moment, only a moment, when he first opened his eyes, having lost time again, swallowed in the sea of excruciation, why he expected the dagger to be cast across the room, expected his sternum to be healed, his body free of the agony, why he expected to be freed. He doesn't know why. But then the moment passes and the feeling fades with it. And everything is back in order.

Only … he doesn't know why the Petrova face is haunting his brain.

* * *

**_finis_**


End file.
